“It is intolerable that more than a year after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, girls are still not allowed to attend secondary schools,” said UAE Ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh.
Nusseibeh said in front of the UN Security Council that allowing gender segregation was contributing to gender apartheid.
“It is disheartening to note that we are still battling the notion that women and girls are victims or survivors rather than agents of change.”
Nusseibeh said the exclusion of Afghan women from public and social life is another example of the numerous ways in which violence against women and girls is perpetuated.
She emphasised that action is now more than ever the missing piece. “We need to stop talking about empowering women and just give them power” she said.
According to Nusseibeh , women and girls need to be given the digital tools to compete in the same world as men and boys in school and in all the other aspects of public life. Their voices must be heard and amplified.
The executive director of UN Women, Sima Bahous, said that there is a major shortage of funding for women’s groups in war-torn countries, going from $181 million in 2019 to $150 million in 2020.
According to Bahous, 77% of women’s civil society organisations in Afghanistan in 2022 will no longer be running programmes, and will therefore have received no funding.
Women’s presence in national parliaments in conflict-affected states is 12% lower than the worldwide norm in local governments, she said.
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